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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
All Down Darkness Wide by Seán Hewitt
☀️☀️🌤️
A thought provoking book that is ultimately unsure of its purpose, meandering through poetic observations on queerness and mental health struggles which ultimately lead to nowhere.
This memoir struggles with that label. It certainly tells the story of Seán Hewitt's experiences, but the form they take is more abstract and removed than most memoirs. The linear narrative, which for me was the most engaging part, focused more on his love Elias than on himself. Here it read more like fiction, but I did connect with the emotional arc easily because of that. But in the lead up to this, and in between, there are large chunks of more internal insights that I found difficult to parse. They felt important in the grand scheme of the book, but also felt so far removed from the narrative holding the book together that I found the pacing and structure perpetually uncomfortable.
It's no doubt that Hewitt is a good writer. His prose in many sections of this made me stop and re-read to truly appreciate the choices he made. Overall, however, I actually felt the whole thing was overwritten and repetitive in a way that I didn't gel with.
I had held hope that by the end of this book the jumble of standalone scenes and the base story would tie themselves together in a satisfying way, but the lack of resolution was, well, resolute. That may have been intentional, but for me it undid all of the emotional work Hewitt had built.
This is certainly an interesting memoir with trigger warnings abound, but the intensity of the subject matter and the form Hewitt put it in weren't aligned for me.
☀️☀️🌤️
A thought provoking book that is ultimately unsure of its purpose, meandering through poetic observations on queerness and mental health struggles which ultimately lead to nowhere.
This memoir struggles with that label. It certainly tells the story of Seán Hewitt's experiences, but the form they take is more abstract and removed than most memoirs. The linear narrative, which for me was the most engaging part, focused more on his love Elias than on himself. Here it read more like fiction, but I did connect with the emotional arc easily because of that. But in the lead up to this, and in between, there are large chunks of more internal insights that I found difficult to parse. They felt important in the grand scheme of the book, but also felt so far removed from the narrative holding the book together that I found the pacing and structure perpetually uncomfortable.
It's no doubt that Hewitt is a good writer. His prose in many sections of this made me stop and re-read to truly appreciate the choices he made. Overall, however, I actually felt the whole thing was overwritten and repetitive in a way that I didn't gel with.
I had held hope that by the end of this book the jumble of standalone scenes and the base story would tie themselves together in a satisfying way, but the lack of resolution was, well, resolute. That may have been intentional, but for me it undid all of the emotional work Hewitt had built.
This is certainly an interesting memoir with trigger warnings abound, but the intensity of the subject matter and the form Hewitt put it in weren't aligned for me.
"For the weeks that followed, I would be afraid of Elias, as though he was a new person now, or one who might, at any moment, kill him. It was as though he was shadowed at every turn by an inversion of himself, someone who stalked his every thought and followed his every move, and whispered dark things in his ear. He was both the man I loved and the person who wanted to kill the man I loved."
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt
Moderate: Vomit, Alcohol
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Death, Vomit, Death of parent
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
medium-paced
Loved this. I will admit there was a moment or two that felt a bit too wordy, but at the same time I felt it could arguably be appropriate. This doesn't feel like a book you want to read through quickly: I wanted to take my time with it and dig into my interpretation of the words and their relation to my own lived experiences. This book goes to some dark places but I think it's about damn time someone acknowledges the unspoken and seemingly isolating side effects of growing up gay in a straight world.
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
A really tender and moving account of the author's formative years. Particularly important depiction of the toll it can take to love and be in a relationship with someone with severe depression.
dark
emotional
reflective
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced